Gamer Janken, or How to Pick a First Player

At board game events you often go from table to table and play single games
with strangers. Asking everyone's age gets tedious even if nobody gets upset at
it, so there's a need for a means of determining first player quickly without
equipment. In my experience this is a popular one.

It works like this:

Everyone does rock-paper-scissors at once

Everyone who picked the least popular answer wins

If there is a tie for least popular, resolve using normal rules

Repeat until only one person remains

This eliminates players very quickly, often finishing after two rounds in my
experience.

To give some examples of resolution, using RPS as shorthand for the various
options played by each player:

RR PPP S → the S player wins because they're the minority

RR PP SSS → R and P tie, so P players win and have a show off

RR PP SS → it's a three way tie so everyone goes again

Similar janken variations have a history in Japan (known as 多い勝ち or
少ない勝ち depending on whether the minority or majority wins), though without
the tiebreaker mechanic. One blog post from
2008 traces the name "gamer
janken" and exact rules to 水曜日の会 "The Wednesday Club", an apparently
defunct game group that met in Akihabara.

Next time you need to determine first player, it's a decent alternative to
picking the youngest. Ψ